Q: Disable OS X Updates Available notification

I agree with the commentary commentary made

It's absolutely ludicrous that there's no way to fine-tune notification center preferences. Can't I at least change it so that I only get software update notifications once a day instead of every ten ******* minutes?

Driving me crazy. The damned thing is up in the right corner permanently. I am trying to ignore it, but it's like ignoring dripping water. It is, I believe, built into the system, in my case 10.8.3, as I don't get it on my older Mac (10.5.8). I have unchecked all notifications in System Preferences, but the update one is unaffected. And it is always for updates that I neither want nor need.

Just turn off Software Updates then, and manually check when you want to.  Easy.

My thoughts exactly!

Apple - Please do something about this.  I think this is probably the worst UI feature in OSX that I have come across to-date.

As far as Apple forcing you to install updates, that is only in regards to security updates stored in XProtect. The setting is tucked away in System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Advanced > Automatically update safe downloads list. This is the reason why you can't install old versions of Flash or Java, even if you haven't run software updates in a while.

As for the OP, I agree that this message is very annoying and needs to have a way of disabling it. The really annoying thing is that the only way to get rid of it WITHOUT running updates is to click details and then quit the App Store. That gets so tiresome. I just want OS X to download the updates in the background, maybe even notify me that they were downloaded, but then GO AWAY when they are done! It's not the notification that annoys me but the process it takes to get rid of it. Just have it fade away after 5 seconds or put and "X" in the window so I can close it. I shouldn't be forced to go to the App Store.

As far as Apple forcing you to install updates, that is only in regards to security updates stored in XProtect.

Not sure if that is correct; I have all notifications and automatic anything disabled. Out of curiosity, I just hit check for updates and found the Security Update which was released on July 2 - this is July 5th and I had not gotten a notification, nor was anything installed automatically. It is just sitting there with another update for RAW compatibility.

The security update that you see there has nothing to do with updating malware definitions in XProtect. These particular definitions are stored in /System/Library/CoreServices/CoreTypes.bundle/Contents/Resources/XProtect.plist . They get updated automatically without the user knowing if you have the box checked that is notated in the attached pic, in System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Advanced. You can have everything turned off regarding software updates, but if you have this box checked and are connected to the internet, your malware defintions are being updated.

Trust me I am 100% sure about this... when Java 6 was disabled earlier this year, ALL of my 400+ machines I oversee were unable to connect to certain campus services. I soon became very familiar with how all of this works.

Could be - I wouldn't know about that since I said that I have anything/everything automatic disabled and that includes NOT having the automatic update list checked.

So I found some more information that may be useful... first of all you can easily dismiss the notification by swiping to the right over it. That way you don't have to click on it and quit the App Store. Secondly, there is a preference string for this alert type but apparently it is broken - there are developer reports of problems regarding the "NSUserNotificationStyle" alert string in 10.8. You can view this by going to /Applications/AppStore > right click for "show package contents", then Contents/Info.plist. You can open it with TextEdit, but I use Pref Setter for editting .plist files. You'll see a string titled "NSUserNotificationStyle", and it will have a string value of "alert" or "alerts". Apparently this sets the notification type, which should be able to be removed or even modified to a banner or none. However the string doesn't work at all in 10.8 for some reason. Hopefully it will be fixed in an update, then the Info.plist can be modified in order to keep these alerts from showing up.

first of all you can easily dismiss the notification by swiping to the right over it. That way you don't have to click on it and quit the App Store.

that should be common knowledge. thank you.

Thank you for what? You didn't contribute anything at all to the discussion. Posts like this don't help anyone.

i don't understand your post, but maybe you though i meant my post sarkastic or ironic but i didn't: swiping the message out of the screen was quite helpful for me and i wish apple had made it more intuitive for the user how to get rid of this restart-or-details messages without opening the mac app store or restarting.

User interface consistency would have helped too. Holding option and delete the message like widgets in the dashboard would have been a more consitent approach. But it's just my opinion.

FWIW, swiping is not an option everywhere (I have iMac and a wired mouse).

clicking and moving the notification to the right (out of the screen) works too.

i have a wired mouse too :)